Priti Patel, hear this loud and clear: Julian Assange must not be handed over to the US | Duncan Campbell

A decision from the home secretary is imminent. Extradition would set a disastrous precedent

Priti Patel now has to make one of the most important decisions of her career: will she bow to heavy pressure from the United States and send a vulnerable man who has been convicted of no crime to face an indeterminate number of years in an American jail where he may experience intimidation and isolation? Her decision is imminent and all other legal avenues have been explored.

This was the scenario 10 years ago in the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who, working out of his north London bedroom, trawled through the computer systems of Nasa and the US defence department in search of information about UFOs and left behind some mildly rude messages about the systems' sloppy security. The home secretary was Theresa May, who halted extradition proceedings at the last minute.

Duncan Campbell is a former Guardian crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent

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